SILK AND COLOURthis artist's perspective on living a creative life in a chaotic world

I have been working furiously these last few weeks, no, not in the studio, but painting my house. I've been wanting to renovate my little mountain cottage for years, however having unexpectedly bought my studio and then spent 6 months renovating it 3 years ago, I had to wait a while before I felt the inclination again to invest a lot of time and energy with brush and roller. Fortunately my home is much smaller than my studio and the ceilings are low, so it's not as big a job, although nevertheless it is an ambitious project.

Despite spending most of my time painting I have found some time to do some art work.

This is the third work in my current paper series (you can see the first two here). I'm thinking of calling this series "The Shapes of Life", or something....... It needs some tweaking, or maybe not. Perhaps I just need to live with the idea for a while.

Part Greek key, part celtic, the motif represents the paths along which life takes us. We might think we are going straight, but somehow the route from one place to another is seldom direct.

Diversions, wrong turns, wrong time, wrong place, what we want versus what we need. Sometimes we choose the path, sometimes the path chooses us.

We rarely walk the path alone and so sometimes we need to let someone else lead. Sometimes we need to rescue someone, take them by the hand and walk their path for a while before returning to our own.

And, sometimes we just reach a dead end. Thankfully, we can usually turn around and get back on the path.

Not all paths lead somewhere wondrous. Many take us to places of pain and worry, grief and desperation. And then, sometimes it seems we can see forever, the sky is boundless and the sun is warm and that's when the path opens out and delivers us to the very place we need to be.

In the end it doesn't matter what path you are on. It only matters that you keep walking.